Keep Your Enemies Closer
by kingfisher's game
Summary: (2 years arc AU) Kaiser!Okita takes alien hunter!Kagura prisoner to get intel about Gintoki's forces, but Kagura's got plans of her own.


Keep Your Enemies Closer

Chapter 1: Chihuahua

…

_Notes: Fair warning—this story is a bit darker than my usual writing._

* * *

When Kagura came to, it was so dark it took her a moment to realize she was really awake. Not the kind of dark that she was accustomed to, like the dark of a starless sky at night or the dark when she turned out the lights before going to sleep. Even when it _seemed_ dark, there was always some tiny source of light somewhere and Kagura's eyes could catch it, even if human eyes couldn't. But this—this was truly pitch black.

Kagura wrinkled her brow and with that action, felt against her face the smooth surface of something covering her eyes. Good—that meant her vision wasn't as damaged as she'd thought it was. After that last fight, she was lucky she wasn't blind…

But there was something else worrying her, and that was how much effort it had taken just to move her facial muscles. She felt exhausted, and after having been unconscious for who knows how long, _still_ being drained was a bad sign. It meant starvation, or dehydration, or drugs. Possibly all of the above.

She'd been captured, she knew that. Her arms were bound above her in heavy manacles, and they must have been forged from something stronger than plain old iron, because she couldn't budge them. She was sitting in a slumped position on folded knees, and before she'd regained consciousness the manacles around her wrist had been the only things holding her upright. There were probably similar restraints on her ankles, but her legs were so numb she could barely feel them.

_Breathe in._

_Breathe out._

_Stay calm._

Kagura tested the manacles again, and a spike of pain lanced down from her right wrist. Dislocated, and the manacles were holding the bones out of place, preventing them from healing. If she could just get out of these bonds… Maybe she'd be able to, when she got back to full strength…

But _he_ wouldn't be so careless, would he?

If she stood up, the tension on her wrists would be relieved, maybe enough to allow her to take off whatever was over her eyes. The first step to getting out of here would be to figure out exactly where 'here' was. Kagura attempted to flex her muscles, to try to overcome the awful numb feeling. Nothing happened.

_Don't panic._

She needed food and something to drink. In the two years she'd been with her father she'd learned to get control over her hunger a little better, but some things never change. As soon as she thought about food, about fluffy white rice and eggs with their soft, dripping yolks and pork and fish and her favorite pickled seaweed (she'd missed it so much when she was away), she was starving. Her mouth was dry, too. As much as she was fantasizing about food, she also knew that dehydration could kill her a lot quicker than starvation.

He was going to have to feed her at some point. He would know how big her appetite was, that she didn't eat like a human being, right? He must have kept her alive for a reason.

"Ch…Ch…" Kagura could make her lips move, but the sounds coming out of her mouth were little more than half-formed whispers. She forced herself to salivate and tried again.

…

"She woke up for a little bit today, Kaiser."

The low-ranking Shinsengumi officers standing at attention in the Kaiser's doorway didn't need to specify who 'she' was. There was only one person they could be talking about.

"Oh?" Okita leaned forward, rested his elbows on his desk. "How long was she awake?"

"Not long, Kaiser. She was out again before we replaced her IV bag. Maybe-" The man speaking cut himself off abruptly when the other man elbowed him in the side.

Okita raised an eyebrow. "Go on."

"Well… Not to question your orders, Kaiser, but I know you want her alive… Her condition has deteriorated significantly in just these two days. Yato consume higher volumes of food than humans, perhaps they starve more quickly as well?"

In the officer's voice was an unspoken request and Okita nodded to agree to it. "If she's awake tomorrow, you can feed her. Something easy to eat."

"Yes, Kaiser. And one more thing—you said to report if she says anything…"

Something like excitement traveled up Okita's spine. "Did she? Say something?"

The two officers traded looks. "Yes, although it makes no sense. Perhaps we misheard. She said something about a dog."

"She owns a dog, an Inugami. She said 'Sadaharu'?" Okita mused.

One of the officers shook his head. "No, nothing about an inugami. What she said was, well…"

"…'Chihuahua,'" said the other one.

"Over and over."

"She said she was going to kill it, Kaiser."

"Does that mean anything to you, Kaiser?"

Okita had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing.

…

"I'm sorry about this."

Kagura turned her face toward the voice, startled. She hadn't heard anyone approaching. Yet another way her senses were dulled. Now, paying attention, she could barely pick up on the faint shifts of air, the sound of breath, the little indications of a foreign presence that used to come so naturally to her. With her sight gone, she needed her other senses more than ever, but whatever the chihuahua was using to keep her off her game was affecting her instincts, too. "G-Go to hell," she spat, hating how weak and hoarse her voice sounded, even to her own ears.

The person speaking sighed. "I brought you lunch. Here." There was some shuffling, and the sound of something wooden against the dirty floor, _oh god she could smell it_, her favorite, rice, soft and perfect, the steam was pouring over her face and she was practically drooling—

The manacles clanked together as she instinctively reached down. She'd almost forgotten about them in her haste, them and the dislocated wrist that was now aching hard enough to practically bring tears to her eyes, _damn it_. She breathed deeply.

"There's something wrong with your hand," the voice murmured worriedly, and Kagura felt cold fingers flit over her dislocated wrist. Assessing. _Finally_ someone realized it. It was probably black and blue by this point. At least the callused fingers were so cold they actually felt nice on her chafing and inflamed skin. "Has it been like this the whole time?"

It was beginning to dawn on Kagura that the voice was familiar, although she couldn't quite put her finger on who it belonged to. Definitely not the chihuahua, that was certain. "Can't heal with the chains in the way," she mumbled distractedly.

The person's examination of her wrist halted briefly, and he drew back. Perhaps considering. "I don't want to have to feed you," he said after a little while. "If I take that cuff off, will you promise not to try anything?

Kagura would promise to fly him to the moon and back on her magic carpet if it would get him to take off the cuffs. She nodded eagerly (suppressing the wince that came on at the exertion of underworked muscles). And then she listened very, very carefully as the person unlocked her right cuff. He left the left one untouched, still hanging above Kagura uncomfortably, but one hand was enough. Even with her senses dulled like they were, she'd strained until she'd heard and felt and _sensed_ that the man took the key from somewhere around the right side of his waist, and that it was on a ring. Probably in his pocket or on a belt.

Steeling herself for the discomfort, Kagura pushed her wrist back into place. It hurt like hell, of course, but it would heal quickly once it was aligned. And once she felt confident she could fight with that hand, she'd go for the key ring and free herself.

But first, the blindfold. She reached up to her face to pull it away, but a cool hand gripping her arm stopped her.

"You don't want to do that, trust me," said the voice.

Kagura cocked her head to the side.

"Your eyes were injured in your fight with the Kaiser. They're still healing."

Kagura found that hard to believe. She'd healed from gunshot wounds in a day, so what kind of injury would be so bad it would take multiple days to heal? Her Yato blood could heal anything short of amputation at a much accelerated pace. The dislocated wrist would have healed within an hour of the original injury if it hadn't been kept out of place by the manacles.

But the person's grip on her arm was unyielding, so she let it slide and reached down for the rice paddle instead.

It was gone too soon, the food. She could put away ten times this amount on a good day. The person gave her a cup, and she drank. Never had plain, room-temperature tap water tasted so good. But it was gone too soon, just like the rice, and Kagura was left unsatisfied.

She made a fist with her right hand and then stretched the fingers outward. The re-aligned bones were already an order of magnitude improved from what they'd been at first. Good enough to fight with, good enough for her to mount an escape attempt. The second the cup of water was empty, she threw it sharply in one direction (_divert his attention, yes, that's it, people can't help looking toward the source of a sound_) and lunged forward to grab at the ring of keys on his hip. Even compromised like this, she was fast.

But so was he, faster than he should have been. The soft-hearted attitude had let her believe this was just some C-class Shinsengumi droog, someone she'd have no trouble taking care of. She should have paid more attention to those calluses on his hands. They were a samurai's calluses, like Gin-chan's, thick and rough from years of devoted practice. And the second Kagura's face brushed past the man's collar and she caught the whiff of cigarette smoke, she knew she was screwed.

She barely heard the metallic slip of sword against sheath before she felt it against the side of her neck. He'd grabbed her right wrist with his non-dominant hand and tilted it just so, almost far enough to snap her tender bones back out of place but not quite. It wasn't painful, but she could feel the threat in the action.

With no better recourse, she went limp and allowed him to carefully cuff her right wrist back into place.

"Sorry," he said again. Even sounded sincere about it, the lying son of a bitch.

"Hijikata." She tried his name out, and it felt wrong. Not just because she hadn't seen him in two years, and not just because she was more used to calling him 'Mayora' or 'tax thief' or whatever mildly insulting nickname she felt the need to assign him when she was 14. It felt wrong because _he_ felt wrong. The Hijikata Toushirou she remembered wasn't some Shinsengumi droog at all. And he wasn't soft-hearted, at least not like this. The demon Vice Chief from her memories, the one who'd saved her life on more than one occasion—he didn't do half measures. "You've changed."

There was a pause, and a rustling as Hijikata shifted positions. "We've all changed," he said, voice weary.

Kagura knew this was true. She _wanted_ to rant and rail against him, to yank on the manacles until her skin tore, to indulge the fiery anger toward all of this, all the things that had gone wrong in her Earth while she was away. 14-year-old Kagura would not have hesitated, and that urge was still seething inside her, burning for an outlet. But she'd had two years to practice controlling her instincts, and from the outside she probably looked like a different person.

She licked her lips. They were already dry. "You are taking orders from the sadist now, yes?"

"Yes. After Kondou left to be with Shimura Tae, Sougo took over."

"And you…agree…with what he is doing?"

"We don't agree. We obey."

Kagura could feel a bit of her old spirit rising up in her. "Not you, Mayora. You are not like that, uh-huh."

"…There are armed guards outside, and all throughout the complex. Even if you could get past all of them despite how injured you are right now, Sougo would have no trouble beating you again in your current state."

Kagura shook off the prickle of annoyance that crawled up her neck at the word 'again'. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying…" Hijikata's voice trailed off, but he found it again after a beat. "If I were in your position, trying to mount an escape from the heart of the Shinsengumi, I'd at least wait until my eyes were healed. Just something to think about."

As he left, Kagura wondered if she'd stumbled upon an ally.

…

It was going to take Okita a while to get over the fact that he had Kagura chained up in his basement.

Kagura, who'd been the first girl to ever fight him to a draw in fair combat.

Kagura, whose older brother was the Admiral of the Harusame, whose father was the greatest alien sweeper to have ever lived, and whose mother—well, there were rumors, and then there were _legends_.

Kagura, who had disappeared into thin air two years ago along with the rest of the Yorozuya. Not that Okita would have expected a goodbye had he known she was leaving, but it had been a shock, the first time he came to the Yorozuya with a job only to see the 'closed indefinitely' sign on the door. He'd wondered.

Kagura, who was going to win the war for him.

She was like a daughter to Gintoki, everyone knew that, and Okita was certain that hadn't changed in the past two years, no matter what else had. Everything had changed, hadn't it? Okita wondered now, not for the first time (or even the first time that day), if he actually liked the world as it was today more than the world of two years ago. He had usurped Hijikata, yes, but had he ever _really_ wanted total control of the Shinsengumi like this? He had wanted to be vice chief, but now he was "Kaiser", "Kaiser", bloody fucking "_Kaiser_" to anyone who spoke to him.

There was an undeniable part of him that missed defending his chief, his city. A battle of conquest was not the same as a battle to protect something worth protecting, and the difference was the stakes. Now Okita had nothing to lose—_or_, he amended, _nothing that could be threatened_.

But. Gintoki had returned from training in the mountains, Shinpachi from his sister's dojo, and Kagura from god-knows-where in the universe, all to converge upon Edo. Together, they were a threat the likes of which Okita hadn't had the chance to mow down in quite some time. He was looking forward to it.

After all, his trump card was chained up in the basement.


End file.
